Originally posted by Vunak23

ArcheAge is a Sandpark, its what the fans have dubbed it. It takes the leveling from a themepark and the endgame of a sandbox. The class design is a mix as well. 

Its been heavily influenced by the Lineage series, since it is coming from the mind that created the Lineage series Jake Song. It is not as grindy as Lineage, and supports more sandbox features than themepark features than lineage did. 

Hmmm, just like Aion wasn't suppose to be the typical Asian grind?  Even the lowest level of Asian grind is too much for most Western gamers.  I have yet to experience an Eastern sector game that has had any lasting, let alone immediate appeal.  I don't think they have a clue what casual gaming even is and I really don't see it in AA either.

Originally posted by Uzik

If you cannot kill, loot, destroy and steal you GREATLY limit the overall spectrum of social interactions.

 

If you want a crafting game that is fine, but it is not a sandbox. 

 

A sandbox implies that you can build something, and someone else can knock it down.  Without room for people to be truly evil and for players to truly lose something of value, the overall accomplishment is no better than playing a single player RPG.  Your reliance on social interaction is EXTREMELY limited when things like PvP, and territory control are so structured.

 

 

Not to burst a bubble. But you can do this in ArcheAge. And not just with players, you can do this with player build houses, fortresses, player plantantions.(e.g. Trees)

And about structured PvP. At the third continent you can create your own nation and play the game like DF with a few more sandbox features. It just offers a more save and structured version of it in the two starter contintents.. although you can kill and be killed from everyone in the starter contintents nevertheless, but you may be tagged as criminal, and by be thrown out of the faction and become a pirate for doing it a lot. In the third continent everyone is fair game.

In all honestly, altough AA have a lot of themepark elements it also have a lot more sandbox elements than darkfall. You are as example not limited to build your city on predefined locations, not limited to build just a city.. you can build your house or plantation whereever you want. ( a lot of hidden tree plantation on secrets places(planted from players), and a lot to steal there)

Just looting is limited and as much as i know undecided at the moment. As much as i know you cant loot equiped armor/weapons, although  they think about limited drop chance for equiped stuff. But therefore you carry all resources on a backbag which is fully lootable.

Another point i dont like that much is, that they added an Auction house in CB5, but as much as they said, they dont know if they will implement it in the release version. We will see it most probably in the OB, if they drop the Auction house or go with it.. and i personally think an Auction house is really not a good idea for a sandbox game where economy and trading is that important.

AA is more hardcore(harsh pvp and loot ruleset) than SWG ever was.. and i guess noone will argue that SWG was not a sandbox? Just adding levels and a few quests in the early levels dont make it less of a sandbox, especially as long as your are not required of doing them. And UO got also levels... 7 gms are max levels and the total amount of level was with it 700. You can call it what you want, but it is not different than a level. It is much more important how you implement it, and how huge the vertical progression is with it, and how much of a separation of players and how much of gated content you get with it. The numbers dont hurt, but the huge amount of vertical progression going with it in most themepark mmos do hurt.